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I thought they were like us but nicer than us. I had no idea of the brutality they could show. The true story of Jane Goodall, the English woman who was secretary to biologist Louis Leakey and who went to live among chimpanzees in the Gombe of Tanzania, becoming an expert on the habitat in the world’s longest-running primatological study. I was the Geographic cover girl, she laughs, in a biographical work anchored in her narration and some contemporary interviews but brought to life by the archive footage shot by the man who became her husband, Baron Hugo van Lawick with a typically compelling score by Philip Glass. While she was studying chimp behaviour and learning how to rear their son from her subjects, she was finding that chimps could be as aggressive and war-like as humans and just how distressing the results could be. If you have read her work then you will be familiar with David Greybeard and the colour film of this magnificent animal will be truly heartwarming even if his bitter end is hard to bear. This also offers insights into Goodall’s background, the effect of separation from her husband and the difficulties in bringing up their boy Grub in the Gombe while van Lawick wanted to remain working in the Serengeti. Trips to raise money to keep the eventual research base going are treated with mordant humour. This is a wonderful piece of work with Brett Morgen’s assemblage of von Lawick’s 16mm films (thought lost until 2014) creating a painstaking record of the most important such study we have but also includes much home movie footage which clearly demonstrate van Lawick’s growing infatuation with his other subject – Goodall herself. Adapted from Goodall’s books and notes by director Morgen, who also produced and edited this beautiful film. Utterly captivating.

No dame ever said anything as sweet as this motor’s going to sound to us when she gets rollin’. The Libyan desert, 1942. A group of American soldiers led by tank commander MS Master Sergeant Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart) become isolated in their M3 Lee during the retreat to El Alamein while behind them Tobruk falls. As they drive across the desert they pick up a group of Allied stragglers: British medic Captain Jason Halliday (Richard Nugent), who cedes control to Gunn, four Commonwealth soldiers and Free French Corporal Leroux (Louis Mercier). The group comes upon Sudanese Sergeant Major Tambul (Rex Ingram) and his Italian prisoner, Giuseppe (J. Carrol Naish). Tambul volunteers to lead them to a well at Hassan Barani. Gunn insists that the Italian be left behind, but, after driving a few hundred feet, relents and lets him join the others. With their supplies of fuel, food and water running low, they try to reach a desert fortress. A large German detachment is also heading there. En route, Luftwaffe pilot Captain von Schletow (Kurt Kreuger) strafes the tank, seriously wounding Clarkson (Lloyd Bridges), one of the British soldiers. The German fighter aircraft is shot down and von Schletow is captured. Arriving at Hassan Barani, the group finds the well is dry. Clarkson succumbs to his wounds and they bury him there. Tambul guides them to the desert well at Bir Acroma, but it is almost dry, providing only a trickle of water, and the group have to delay their departure until they can collect as much as they can. When German scouts arrive soon afterwards, Gunn sets up an ambush… This is undoubtedly well-crafted propaganda urging international cooperation to fight the Nazis but it’s fiercely exciting, brilliantly played by a deftly chosen cast including Bruce Bennett and Dan Duryea and looks wonderful (it was shot near the Salton Sea in California). Adapted from a story titled Patrol by Philip MacDonald, the screenplay is by John Howard Lawson, James O’Hanlon with uncredited work by Sidney Buchman and directed by Zoltan Korda. Wasser!

They don’t make ’em like they used to. An aging James Bond (Sean Connery) makes a mistake during a routine training mission which leads M (Edward Fox) to believe that the legendary MI6 spy is past his prime. M indefinitely suspends Bond from active duty. He’s sent off to a fat farm where he witnesses SPECTRE member Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) administering a sadistic beating to a fellow patient whose eye she then scans. She and her terrorist colleagues including pilot Jack Petachi (Gavan O’Herlihy) successfully steal two nuclear warheads from the U.S. military for criminal mastermind Blofeld (Max Von Sydow). M must reinstate Bond, as he is the only agent who can beat SPECTRE at their own game. He follows Petachi’s sister Domino (Kim Basinger) with her lover and SPECTRE agent Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) to the Bahamas and then befriends her at a spa in Nice by posing as a masseur. At a charity event in a casino Bond beats Largo at a video game where the competitors receive electric shocks of increasing intensity. Bond informs Domino Largo’s had her brother killed … There’s an incredible motorbike chase when Blush captures Bond and a really good stunt involving horses in a wild escape from the tower at the top of a temple in North Africa but this isn’t handled as well as you’d like and some of the shooting looks a little rackety: inexperienced producer Jack Schwartzman had underestimated production costs and wound up having to dig into his own funds. (He was married to actress Talia Shire who has a credit on the film – their son is actor Jason; his other son John is the film’s cinematographer). With Rowan Atkinson adding comic relief as the local Foreign Office rep, Von Sydow as the cat-stroking mad genius and Brandauer giving his best tongue in cheek as the neurotic foe, this is not in the vein of the original Bonds. It’s a remake of Thunderball which was the subject of litigation from producer Kevin McClory who co-wrote the original story with Ivar Bryce and Ian Fleming who then based his novel on the resulting screenplay co-written with Jack Whittingham before any of the films were ever made. (This is covered in Robert Sellers’ book The Battle for Bond). It thereby sideswiped the ‘official’ Broccoli machine by bringing the original Bond back – in the form of a much older Connery in a re-run of his fourth Bond outing which had been massively profitable. Pamela Salem is Moneypenny and is given very little to do; while Bernie Casey turns up as Felix Leiter. With nice quips about age and fitness (as you’d expect from witty screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. but there were uncredited additions by comic partnership Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais), good scene-setting, glorious women and terrific underwater photography by the legendary marine DoP Ricou Browning, this is the very essence of a self-deprecating late entry – particularly in the wake of Roger Moore’s forays and he wasn’t even done yet: Octopussy came out after this. Fun but not particularly memorable, even if we’re all in on the joke.

Look on the bright side – at least we learned how to make french fries. Pampered Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy) is the king-in-waiting of an African country and wants for nothing, except a wife who will love him in spite of his title. Even all those agreeably nude dolls washing and toileting him every day can’t make him change his mind. To escape an arranged marriage as per the tradition that only his father the king (James Earl Jones) could undo, Akeem flees to America accompanied by sidekick Semmi (Arsenio Hall) to find his queen. He takes up residence in the worst apartment ever and utters cuss words he’s never heard before, taking them for colloquial blessings. Disguised as a foreign student working in fast food at a yellow McD’s joint for Mr McDowell (John Amos) whose business resembles the other famous McD’s except for not having seeds on the buns, he romances Lisa (Shari Headley). However he struggles with revealing his true identity and doesn’t know how to broach his marital intentions to his father. The chickens finally come home to roost when Semmi gets fed up of the ruse, pretends to his own girlfriend that he’s the prince and finally contacts the royal parents … Directed by John Landis, this fish out of water romcom is a lot of fun and allows Murphy (and Hall) to don a range of disguises (Murphy even dons whiteface to play a Jewish man in a barber’s!) that don’t however detract from the forward thrust of the narrative. There’s also a nice scene sequence with Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche, updating the story from the last Landis-Murphy collaboration, Trading Places. The screenplay is credited to David Sheffield and Barry W. Blaustein with a story by Murphy, but a lengthy lawsuit by legendary columnist Art Buchwald eventually acknowledged that the source material was his. Good, almost old-fashioned fun.

A desert is full of bones that were looking for treasure. Experienced desert guide Joe January (John Wayne) leaves a Timbuktu police cell and reluctantly joins a Saharan treasure hunting expedition led by Paul Bonnard (Rossano Brazzi), a man obsessed with confirming his dead father’s claim to have found a lost city. Dita (Sophia Loren) a woman of dubious reputation, becomes infatuated with Paul. She invites herself along and turns up on a camel in the middle of a caravan of Touareg – it’s quite the entrance. During the ordeal Joe and Dita become attracted to each other and tensions escalate. As they run out of water, they stumble upon the ancient city and a well. There, they find three human skeletons, a woman and two men: Joe figures out that Paul’s father found his woman in the arms of his guide, killed them and then shot himself. The treasure is nowhere to be found. Paul’s faith in his father is shattered and he becomes drunk and maniacal. They find the treasure after Joe deciphers the clues left by Paul’s father in a Bible. They load the jewellery and artifacts and prepare to leave in the morning. Paul tries to seduce Dita but she rejects him and he gets into a fight with Joe. Paul sneaks off in the night taking all the animals, supplies, and treasure with him and leaving the others to die. Joe and Dita chase after him on foot and eventually catch up, finding him unconscious from dehydration. While Joe and Dita dig for desperately needed water, Paul regains consciousness and in his delirium thinks they are digging his grave. He buries the treasure and attacks Joe from behind with a knife. Dita is forced to shoot and kill Paul. When they spot a caravan, Joe and Dita are saved. I can cook! I can breathe! I can live! Lorendeclares happily to Wayne and it’s this kind of snappy dialogue that enlivens what should have been a rather more fun outing. Written by Ben Hecht and Robert Presnell, with that cast it should have been a sizzler but they don’t entirely mesh. Henry Hathaway directed it for Wayne’s Batjac Productions and it was one of a half-dozen films they made together. It’s shot by Jack Cardiff and looks amazing – with wide shots of the Libyan desert anticipating the more luxuriant episodes of Lawrence of Arabia and the treasure hunt leading to the kind of thirsty delusion worthy of Greed. It’s wonderful to see the ruins of Leptis Magna, the 7th century Roman settlement. There’s a nice fight between the three points of this love triangle and guess who comes out on top? We must give thanks for Sophia Loren!

This isn’t vengeance, it’s pointless slaughter. You’ve turned warfare into murder. Following a botched incident in Indochina in which his under-resourced paratroopers are overrun by communists at Dien Bien Phu, Basque Colonel Pierre Raspeguy (Anthony Quinn) is freed from Vietnamese war prison to assist in quelling the resistance to French rule in Algeria being led by Mahidi (George Segal) a former French lieutenant. Raspeguy is helped by Captain Esclavier (Alain Delon) a military historian who has tired of fighting and Captain Boisfeuras (Maurice Ronet) who breathes war. Raspeguy has to shape up an airborne unit to fight the insurgents with the promise of being made General and marriage to a beautiful countess (Michele Morgan) the widow of the man who died helping reinforce Raspeguy’s garrison. Meanwhile Esclavier meets local girl Aicha (Claudia Cardinale) and believes she’s on their side and not the FLN (National Liberation Front). After participating in a murderous ambush in a village Esclavier starts to take a different view of his nation’s activities in the name of war … The bestselling French novel The Centurions by Jean Larteguy was acquired by producer/director Mark Robson and adapted by Nelson Gidding. It has lots to recommend it – several well-staged action scenes, issues of retribution and redemption and a to-die-for cast, reuniting as it does the beautiful young lovers from The Leopard, Delon and Cardinale, and it gives Quinn an excellent showcase in a vaguely biographical role (that of Marcel Bigeard, the commander in Indochina) as the colonel keen to justify himself after taking the fall. Political subtleties are necessarily worked out in broad characterisation with Cardinale as the stunning woman who plays both ends against the middle. Despite simplifying issues in the narrative this remains a rare English-language attempt to get to grips with a war that still has huge ramifications in France. The last image, with Delon leaving the military and seeing an FLN child activist painting a graffito, is a brilliant conclusion to a complex scenario.

Aka Desert Attack. Two million men. Two million stories. This is one that happens to be true. Captain Anson (John Mills) is dying for a drink but he has to leave his post in Tobruk before the Germans invade and make his way with a medical unit by field ambulance (nicknamed Katy) to Alexandria in Egypt. He has to travel with MSM Tom Pugh (Harry Andrews) and a couple of nurses, Diana Murdoch (Sylvia Syms) and Denise Norton (Diane Clare). They make their own way when they get separated from the rest of their colleagues and come cross a South African officer Captain van der Poel (Anthony Quayle) who wants a lift to the British lines. They are fired on by the German Afrika Corps and Denise is shot through the walls of the vehicle. When van der Poel approaches the Germans they withdraw. Anson is suspicious. Van der Poel cannot be parted from his backpack – he shows Anson a couple of bottles of gin and the Brit comforts himself with dreams of a a drink in Alexandria. Pugh is suspicious when van der Poel doesn’t know how to make tea the (British) Army way and is convinced he’s seen an antenna in the backpack. When van der Poel goes off again at night they shine the ambulance lights on him and he gets stuck in quicksand and they have to decide what to do with a German spy … This is a classic British fifties wartime adventure, with John Mills at the peak of his career exploiting notions of his occasionally abject masculinity and he’s especially impressive here, battling alcoholism and exhaustion. Syms has a very good role as the woman who appears to understand him while Quayle is excellent as the interloper with a diplomatic way about him and the brute strength required to push the ambulance when it gets stuck in an escarpment. Christopher Landon adapted his own Saturday Evening Post articles (and then a 1957 novel) with T. J. Morrison and it was directed with verve by J. Lee Thompson. This got a whole new lease of life thirty years ago when the final sequence was used as an ad by Carlsberg because as everyone knows and John Mills says, Worth waiting for. Iconic.

We all know that two wrongs don’t make a right. So when geothermal scientist Stephen Sorenson (Dana Andrews) figures that deep-mining magma in the earth’s core which resulted in a fissure in the earth can be remedied – with a nuclear device! you know you’re in for an epic disaster. His colleague Ted Rampion (Kieron Moore) can’t dissuade him from this mega end of days move and their quarrel is emphasised by the woman they have in common Maggie (Janette Scott). She was involved with Ted before she married Stephen, who is concealing the fact that he’s about to die. That gives her desire to have his child an edge to this cracking drama when the two guys knock their very cerebral heads together about what to do. Very impressive staging, shooting and effects lend this tightly constructed doomsday scenario a lot of believability and style. Spain stands in for Tanganyika in a screenplay by Jon Manchip White and Julian Zimet. Directed by Andrew Marton.

White Queen Black King. The story of a post-WW2 inter-racial marriage with a difference – he’s the king of a South African nation, she’s a British secretary. Guy Hibbert adapted Susan Williams’ book Colour Bar which tells the true story of a scandalous union. David Oyelowo plays Seretse Khama, who is awaiting his role while his uncle is Regent of Bechuanaland (present-day Botswana) and Rosamund Pike is the London woman who meets him at the local Missionary Society where her sister (Laura Carmichael) does charitable work (dancing with black men). When they marry against the British Government’s wishes (it’s a sensitive time for the region because apartheid is being officially sanctioned) they don’t get any warmer a welcome in Africa from his family than they did in London from her parents. Seretse discovers the British have permitted a US mining company to exploit land on his country’s border and he wants his land’s rights established over the prospecting. The couple are forcibly separated as the British try to reason with him and when he goes to London he finds he has been banished while she languishes without him, hospitalised first from diphtheria and then pregnancy. There are political battles to be fought … The real story, as it transpires in the credits sequence, was where the meat was. This is coy on everything – sex, family, politics, race – a politically correct take on a history that is all about exploitation. Neither fish nor fowl, it’s a strange, unbalanced piece of work which makes you constantly question, But what’s happening over there? It’s as though the real story is happening right outside the frame. They misplaced the camera and missed it entirely. Directed by Amma Assante, who does nothing to make this potentially fascinating colonial tale of race, royalty and rivalry remotely interesting.

This Hammer adaptation of the Rider Haggard novel works because it takes it seriously and never really slides into camp territory, which the material always threatened. The performances are dedicated, Ursula Andress is so extremely beautiful and the narrative is well handled by screenwriter David T. Chantler. Robert Day makes sure the archaeologists Major Holly (Peter Cushing) and Leo Vincey (John Richardson) the reincarnated love interest and their valet Job (Bernard Cribbins) are credibly established to include their initial scepticism about a lost Pharaonic city. The saga of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is ultimately a tragic tale of romance, culminating in horrible self-sacrifice and immolation. Andress was re-voiced by Nikki Van der Zyl who did a lot of voiceovers for Bond girls and wound up becoming a lawyer and a painter. It was shot in Israel (which leads to a dialogue gaffe…) The handsome Richardson would be Raquel Welch’s co-star in the following year’s One Million Years BC and he was briefly considered to replace Sean Connery as Bond. He gave up a long career in Italian films to become a photographer. This was a huge hit back in the day and perfect entertainment for a rainy weekend afternoon.